After teaming up with a bunch of god-awful tanks, all of whom knew nothing about aggro, I decided to start playing a few new tanks of my own, setting aside my other characters for now. (yet again, I didn't make it past 25 on the CoV side :P )
I tried a few different combos and here's the results of that:
An Ice/Fire. This one I haven't really gotten anywhere yet, and is currently sitting at a lowbie L7. I imagine it'll be a nice AOE type like my WP/Fire, except that it gets all kinds of ways to slow down enemies down to my level of regen, instead of the WP way of boosting regen to match the # enemies. This pairing should have no problem with aggro the way I did with WP, where I had to manage it fairly intensively.
An Invul/SS. I started it up cause it's a classic combo for a CoH tank. The tank is actually named Classic Tank. It does tank pretty easily except for a stint in the teens against psionic Aberrant Lost. Its currently up in the low 30s. I dont really expect to see any trouble with it until I get to the 40s and psionics start showing up more commonly. This tank is great for the mid level Task Forces like Manticore and Citadel.
A Dark/Energy. Darks are supposed to be some of the top all-around tanks once they get some IOs and defense. Being a resist set, if you stack that with a good defense, it should be a really good tank. This tank does definitely need a little more management than the invul though. This tank basically survives by using it's health leech power, Dark Regeneration, between taking damage, and if you're not on the ball with the timing, you will bite the dust. The knockback was also sort of irritating, and a bit dangerous if you get KB'ed when you need to hit your leech power, so I fixed it up with a Steadfast Defense IO to prevent it.
I decided to take the energy secondary attack set so I could take advantage of the stuns stacking with Dark's Oppressive Gloom. I've just gotten this tank up to the level where I can take OG (L26) and it works beautifully, with Lieutenants and Bosses getting stunned the way the Minions were before OG. The health loss is is well covered by the leech healing, which is really nice. The mobs wander a bit out of AOE range sometimes, but there's always more mobs crowding in, since I play at -1Lvl x5 heroes solo.
Previously I'd played dark up to 15 as a dark/dark, but I didn't like how it didn't have a quick charging AOE attack. I've also played as dark/fire up to the mid 30s too, but I didn't like that fire didn't have anything to help mitigate damage, which occurs with regularity on a resist set like dark. At the time IOs weren't available though, so today it could have been a different story.
The ability to customize the effects also helped a lot too, since I don't especially like the dark effects and the stealth cloak turning you into a shapeless blob. I set up this tank with a grey-white set of effects that look like hot steam pouring out of the tank, and I named it "Steam Powered Tank".
Upsen.
Monday, August 9, 2010
Sunday, June 13, 2010
Antec Skeleton Open Air Case
I was at a computer shop today and saw a most awesome computer case. You install the motherboard flat, in the open top half of the case, and the drives and such go into the cage in the lower half. The whole motherboard is cooled by a single 230mm overhead fan that blows air down from the top.
If I didnt' have my new system and case already, I would have seriously considered this case, cause basically this is how I've been running my last computer for the past year or so - open-air and caseless.
This one's called an Antec Skeleton Open Air Case, and you can google for reviews and images here.
$169.99 Canadian though (as pictured below), ouch.
Upsen.
If I didnt' have my new system and case already, I would have seriously considered this case, cause basically this is how I've been running my last computer for the past year or so - open-air and caseless.
This one's called an Antec Skeleton Open Air Case, and you can google for reviews and images here.
$169.99 Canadian though (as pictured below), ouch.
Upsen.
Sunday, June 6, 2010
CIty of Heroes - City of Villains
I've been spending some time playing CoH lately, or rather, CoV - I started two Masterminds using the new demon-summoning primary. The little creatures you summon are surprisingly durable with a good resistance, and the 2nd tier critter has a property of improving the already good resistance. It makes for a pretty easy time keeping them all alive using some secondary powers. In my case I used Pain Domination and Dark Miasma. They have been a ton of fun to play. Previously the characters were either too management intensive. (Necro/Dark for example) or too automatic (Bots/FF for example) There were probably some better combos of powers than the ones I chose, but I like certain combinations of powersets and I feel that certain other ones are so unrelated that they are a little weird for me to play. (Ninjas/Forcefields? Thugs/Dark netherworld powers in the same character?) By about L8-10 I would be falling asleep on my keyboard, unfortunately.
Both MMs are around L20-25, and that also allows me to unlock one of the villain epic archetypes (VEATs) as well, since they lowered the requirement from 50 down to 20. So I have a "Widow Upsen" running around at L12 right now as well, mostly specced for melee. I hear its supposed to play a little like a Claws/Super Reflexes sort, but there is sadly, pretty low defenses at this stage. I don't see where the additional defense even comes from down the tree, that would make it come anywhere close to a /SR. There is a scaling resistance that is straight out of the SR playbook, and I seem to spend a lot of time using that resistance. (I.e., I am hit a lot and the defenses suck) I wonder what the deal is. I guess I could play her on the ranged spec instead and be an extra tough blaster type?
Anyways, since I still don't really like the Villains maps too much, I ended up creating a new defender as well - an Empathy/Sonic. Simple and fun, I ran around a bit and even bumped into Kin Arad online, who I have not seen for ages, and got a little bit of team play in with one of their alts. (so unfamiliar after so much soloing. 8)
So that's basically the last month or so now. One funny thing is now I'm one of the players that is occasionally disappearing to feed the baby and change their diaper, hence the majority of my time spent soloing.
Upsen.
Both MMs are around L20-25, and that also allows me to unlock one of the villain epic archetypes (VEATs) as well, since they lowered the requirement from 50 down to 20. So I have a "Widow Upsen" running around at L12 right now as well, mostly specced for melee. I hear its supposed to play a little like a Claws/Super Reflexes sort, but there is sadly, pretty low defenses at this stage. I don't see where the additional defense even comes from down the tree, that would make it come anywhere close to a /SR. There is a scaling resistance that is straight out of the SR playbook, and I seem to spend a lot of time using that resistance. (I.e., I am hit a lot and the defenses suck) I wonder what the deal is. I guess I could play her on the ranged spec instead and be an extra tough blaster type?
Anyways, since I still don't really like the Villains maps too much, I ended up creating a new defender as well - an Empathy/Sonic. Simple and fun, I ran around a bit and even bumped into Kin Arad online, who I have not seen for ages, and got a little bit of team play in with one of their alts. (so unfamiliar after so much soloing. 8)
So that's basically the last month or so now. One funny thing is now I'm one of the players that is occasionally disappearing to feed the baby and change their diaper, hence the majority of my time spent soloing.
Upsen.
Monday, May 10, 2010
New System Photos
Well here are some pictures, took a while to find time to take these. I set up the screens in a 3x1 vertical layout, so that the middle of the viewing area is not covered by any black bezel edges. The bezels themselves are a a far cry from a bezel-less setup, but I got adjusted to them pretty quickly. I guess the next thing to do is to find some sort of bezel compensation/adjustment software.
Here's a pic of the insides - You can see the size of the CPU heatsink, it's absolutely humongous. I am very happy with the 3-fans-in-a-row air flow for the CPU cooling - one pushing air into the sink from the front, one pulling it out from the back, and the last one on the chassis pulling the air right out of the case. In total, there are
This is my first time working with a full size tower case and I was really happy with the amount of space inside. I was able to actually put all the cabling behind the motherboard and out of view. The modular power supply helped a lot with this as well, as all the extra unused cables are stored away nicely in a bag on the side.
There are some interesting overclocking and tweaking features available on this motherboard, including some automated overclocking buttons etc, but I haven't really had the time to play with the settings. There is even a fancy tuning port on the back on the system so you can adjust the clock settings on the fly with another computer.
The only problem I've run into is the viewing angle for the LED monitors. In the default horizontal position, they are suitable for viewing from a left, right, or high angle. It has a terrible low viewing angle. This is fine for the horizontal landscape view of course, but for my veritical setup, this means that the right hand monitor is hard to see unless I move far enough to the right to compensate for the angle, which is a bit limiting. You'll notice that I have the right side screen angled more than the left screen, that is because of this problem. The screen only rotates 90 degrees clockwise, and the mount doesn't support any way to rotate the screen 90 degrees counterclockwise. Just using the above-angle instead of the below-angle would have been the best solution. Either I'm going to have to jury rig something to get that, or buy some monitor arms that can swing whichever way I want.
All in all, I am really happy with the system. It's great for putting various system status & monitoring windows on a side screen and still being able to do things in the plentiful amount of free space still available.
Watching anime or other video stuff is still better on the TV upstairs, cause of the bezels, and a lot of the viewing programs like Media Player Classic and VideoLAN cant seem to handle stretching a media window across multiple screens.
I've played a few games and it is almost overwhelming. Playing City of Heroes, there is so much screen that even those little tight s-bends in the cave maps feels like a huge wide corridor to move in. I lose track of what is going on cause there is so much to see and the status windows are so far away, haha.
Also I picked up the new free Mechwarrior Mercenaries, and it's playing beautifully too, though I can't get it any higher than 2600x1200 (whatever the 3rd highest resolution is) for some reason.
I should try pulling out some of my old game software that can run windowed mode, and see how it goes. It's too bad a lot of old software runs at fixed resolutions like 640x480, 800x600, or 1024x768, not that great for widescreen monitors.
I wonder if there's any utilities to force a giant 3600x1900 fullscreen?
Upsen.
Here's a pic of the insides - You can see the size of the CPU heatsink, it's absolutely humongous. I am very happy with the 3-fans-in-a-row air flow for the CPU cooling - one pushing air into the sink from the front, one pulling it out from the back, and the last one on the chassis pulling the air right out of the case. In total, there are
- 3 - 240mm fans - front and side panel pulling air in, top pulling air out.
- 2 - CPU sink mounted 120mm fans, moving air to back of case
- 1 - 140mm fan - back of case pulling cpu air out
- 1 - 120mm fan on the bottom of the case pulling air in (like a vaccuum, gotta watch out)
- 1 - internal power supply unit fan, that pulls air in from the bottom of the PSU and vents out the back, bypassing the case entirely.
This is my first time working with a full size tower case and I was really happy with the amount of space inside. I was able to actually put all the cabling behind the motherboard and out of view. The modular power supply helped a lot with this as well, as all the extra unused cables are stored away nicely in a bag on the side.
There are some interesting overclocking and tweaking features available on this motherboard, including some automated overclocking buttons etc, but I haven't really had the time to play with the settings. There is even a fancy tuning port on the back on the system so you can adjust the clock settings on the fly with another computer.
The only problem I've run into is the viewing angle for the LED monitors. In the default horizontal position, they are suitable for viewing from a left, right, or high angle. It has a terrible low viewing angle. This is fine for the horizontal landscape view of course, but for my veritical setup, this means that the right hand monitor is hard to see unless I move far enough to the right to compensate for the angle, which is a bit limiting. You'll notice that I have the right side screen angled more than the left screen, that is because of this problem. The screen only rotates 90 degrees clockwise, and the mount doesn't support any way to rotate the screen 90 degrees counterclockwise. Just using the above-angle instead of the below-angle would have been the best solution. Either I'm going to have to jury rig something to get that, or buy some monitor arms that can swing whichever way I want.
All in all, I am really happy with the system. It's great for putting various system status & monitoring windows on a side screen and still being able to do things in the plentiful amount of free space still available.
Watching anime or other video stuff is still better on the TV upstairs, cause of the bezels, and a lot of the viewing programs like Media Player Classic and VideoLAN cant seem to handle stretching a media window across multiple screens.
I've played a few games and it is almost overwhelming. Playing City of Heroes, there is so much screen that even those little tight s-bends in the cave maps feels like a huge wide corridor to move in. I lose track of what is going on cause there is so much to see and the status windows are so far away, haha.
Also I picked up the new free Mechwarrior Mercenaries, and it's playing beautifully too, though I can't get it any higher than 2600x1200 (whatever the 3rd highest resolution is) for some reason.
I should try pulling out some of my old game software that can run windowed mode, and see how it goes. It's too bad a lot of old software runs at fixed resolutions like 640x480, 800x600, or 1024x768, not that great for widescreen monitors.
I wonder if there's any utilities to force a giant 3600x1900 fullscreen?
Upsen.
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
New Computer - the details
Here's what I bought - the prices were very good for what I got, most of the items being a midrange item in it's category. The only top tier item is the motherboard, which just came out a few days before I bought it, but it means I have a seriously solid foundation for my new computer.
Coolermaster HAF case:
At first, I was looking at the price of the case - at $120, it was a lot lower than the other full tower cases - most were $300+ But this case in particular is really good with the air flow - bascially, even if you have the covers closed, it is pretty much like having the cover open. Also it has 3 240mm fans built in, as well as a 140mm rear, plus mounting brackets for yet more fans!
The power supply was one of those ho hum well I gotta do what gotta do about this - the modular cables are pretty convenient though.
The motherboard - I was expecting to buy a 790fx chipset board at first, but just last week, the 890fx successor to the 790fx came out. Included are all the fancy features like USB 3.0, dual 16x1 PCIe pipes for video cards (slot 1 and slot 3 eh, not 1 and 2) and even an external tweak/clocking mechanism.
The CPU is a Phenom II x4 - it looks like the price dropped due to the x6 six-core Phenoms coming out.
The memory is a basic high speed memory - caught it on sale for a good enough price that it surprised the salesman. It doesn't have tall cooling fins etc, but it's a good thing, cause otherwise the CPU cooler fan would have conflicted with it.
CPU cooler
I opted for air cooling for practicality this time around - I didn't want the expense of water cooling, even though it looks amazing. After all, the case is really good with air flow, so I should take advantage of it. So I got one of those giant blocks from Scythe. It had a single fan on it already, but I couldn't find a 2nd one of that type. That's why I bought the 2 Arctic Cooling fans and extra bracket - one fan for each side of the heat sink, and so the rpm speeds would match. Plus the white coloured fans are kind of cool looking. Idle CPU 33degress Celsius - 45 degrees under load
Photos to come.
Upsen
- Coolermaster HAF tower case , thought it would be $145 found it for $120.
- Coolermaster 850W modular power supply $145
- Asus Crosshair IV motherboard $250 (Brand new 890FX chipset board - Tiger is selling it for $330 wow)
- CPU Phenom II x4 965 BE - I was expecting $209 but it was $189 by the time I bought it
- Memory 4GB 2000 Adata 9-9-9-24 $140 bought for $110 on sale.
- Scythe Mugen 2 rev B CPU cooler $50
- extra brackets for 2nd cooler fan $6
- 2 Arctic Cooling 120mm PWM fans $7x2
- SATA DVD optical drive $40 - this one had lightscribe, whatever :P
- 3 Dell monitors - 23" rotatable screens - $299x3 on sale for $199x3
- Everything else is salvaged from my old system - mainly my video cards.
Coolermaster HAF case:
At first, I was looking at the price of the case - at $120, it was a lot lower than the other full tower cases - most were $300+ But this case in particular is really good with the air flow - bascially, even if you have the covers closed, it is pretty much like having the cover open. Also it has 3 240mm fans built in, as well as a 140mm rear, plus mounting brackets for yet more fans!
The power supply was one of those ho hum well I gotta do what gotta do about this - the modular cables are pretty convenient though.
The motherboard - I was expecting to buy a 790fx chipset board at first, but just last week, the 890fx successor to the 790fx came out. Included are all the fancy features like USB 3.0, dual 16x1 PCIe pipes for video cards (slot 1 and slot 3 eh, not 1 and 2) and even an external tweak/clocking mechanism.
The CPU is a Phenom II x4 - it looks like the price dropped due to the x6 six-core Phenoms coming out.
The memory is a basic high speed memory - caught it on sale for a good enough price that it surprised the salesman. It doesn't have tall cooling fins etc, but it's a good thing, cause otherwise the CPU cooler fan would have conflicted with it.
CPU cooler
I opted for air cooling for practicality this time around - I didn't want the expense of water cooling, even though it looks amazing. After all, the case is really good with air flow, so I should take advantage of it. So I got one of those giant blocks from Scythe. It had a single fan on it already, but I couldn't find a 2nd one of that type. That's why I bought the 2 Arctic Cooling fans and extra bracket - one fan for each side of the heat sink, and so the rpm speeds would match. Plus the white coloured fans are kind of cool looking. Idle CPU 33degress Celsius - 45 degrees under load
Photos to come.
Upsen
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
Monday, May 3, 2010
New computer.
Well, the replacement Athlon CPU I picked up started getting the habit of shutting down on me, so I decided to bite the bullet and upgrade the whole cpu/motherboard/memory/power supply combo I talked about last time.
So I've bought some parts and put them together, it should be a lot faster than my old PC I put together in like late 2005 or early 2006. Woohoo! :D
I'll talk about it later after I'm sure it doesn't blow up on me.
Upsen.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)